The Sixty Six Seals
by sai-salamander
Summary: The breaking of the sixty six seals proved to be more traumatic than anyone could have imagined. This is the story of those seals, and the characters who break and heal with them.
1. Righteous Men

bTitle:/b The Sixty Six Seals - #1 - #3

bAuthor:/b lj user="hikari_datenshi"

bRating:/b Adult. Oh yes, very adult.

bCharacters/genres:/b Dean, Castiel, Alastair, Sam, etc. Neil Gaiman crossover for #1 - with the short story Other People, in the collection Fragile Things. Ideas and beasties taken from all over; canon, fiction, my scary brain, extensive research into cool stuff and things.

bPairings:/b Dean/Castiel and a smattering of Dean/Alastair if you squint. Which I do. *leers*

bSpoilers:/b Spoiler for 4.16 in part 1. Other than that, none. I don't think.

bWarnings:/b Non-con in #1(isn't this a given, when Alastair's involved? *evil cackle*), darkness throughout, h/c at some point. Probably also Latin!porns and wing!porns at some point, knowing me.

bWord Count:/b WiP. *shakes head sadly* I know, I know.

bSummary:/b The breaking of the sixty six seals proved to be more traumatic than anyone could have imagined. This is the story of each and every seal, and the characters that break and heal with them.

#1 - Righteous Men

"Time is fluid here, Dean," Alastair said. "I said this to your daddy, but he ignored me. Honestly. You'd think people like you would learn," he stretched out the word lazily, "to take me seriously." He leaned in close, and flickered his tongue up Dean's stubbled cheek. "He was so… hm, _righteous_, your daddy." So much contempt in that word, and Dean felt a moment of pride that John Winchester had managed to get under a demon's skin. This was quickly replaced, however, with a moment - no - an eternity, of pain, as Alastair ran the tip of his favourite knife ever-so-slowly down the major vein of his left wrist.

"Down the ri-i-iver, not across the bri-i-idge," he sing-songed, as a blossom of red followed his blade. "It never fails to amuse me, you know. Watching you die." He tilted his head up at Dean, drinking in every grimace of pain, every intake of breath, like an elixir. "Oh sure, they say getting there is half the fun, but it's the final breath that really, hm…gets me going." He reached up and caressed Dean's face in a parody of gentleness.

Dean spat a mixture of blood and bile into Alastair's face and bared his teeth. "It's a bit," he coughed, throat raw from Alastair's last ministrations. "Pathetic that you only get off on people's last breaths. I mean come on!" Dean stared at Alastair, and tried his damnedest not to wince away from his touch. "You're like a dude who's watched too much porn, and now he can only get his rocks off to chicks shitting on each other," he sneered, and then spluttered as Alastair's hand shot to his throat, silencing his words as effectively as if he'd torn out his voicebox. Dean was intimate with how that particular torture felt.

"Never forget, Dean," Alastair smiled, "Down here? Your quips mean nothing. Time is-"

"Yeah, fluid, I get it," he gasped, suddenly horribly aware of where Alastair's _other_ hand was. Dean bucked against the restraints - though it had never done any good before - as Alastair's one hand slowly, so slowly, throttled the life out of him, and the other, oh, the other.

At first, Alastair had been viciously fast - spilling himself into Dean over and over again, glorying in the look of violation on his face and the delicious screams at his demon heat. But, after a time, he grew more… fond of the man strapped to his rack. And there was nothing like death throes to make a man tight, oh, so tight. And so he had begun to take his time - to think up ever more exquisite ways of making his grasshopper break.

---

"Time is fluid here," Alastair pressed his face close to Dean's, the odour of rot on his breath. "Exactly how long do you think you can endure? They always said you were daddy's favourite - just how long can daddy's favourite little hunter hang on to his pathetic thread of humanity? What if I were to… offer you something. Something, hm, priceless? Just how long would it take?"

Dean strained his head forward and glared. "As long as it takes, you sick son of a bitch."

Alastair laughed, and turned to his instruments. He ran a hand over them lovingly, and selected the cat-o'-nine-tails. Settling it on a brazier, he waited - not long - and then hefted it, the tines glowing redder than blood.

---

Alastair advanced, the achingly familiar words on his lips once more, and Dean's head sagged with the weight of it all.

"Time is fluid here, right?"

"And don't you know it, grasshopper." He whet his favourite knife on the stone hanging from his belt of intestines, and flashed Dean a wolfish smile. "You've had more time to think on my offer, now." He traced the line of Dean's throat with a finger, and then, quick as possession, he whipped the knife up and pressed it right at the corner of his right eye. A pinprick of blood welled up like a ruby tear, and, suddenly, shamefully, Dean knew he couldn't take any more. Every inch of him screamed, because, although his body healed itself every time it died, it still retained the memory of pain - the endless agonies, the pokes and the prods, that Alastair had inflicted upon him.

"No more," he whispered.

"I'm sorry, you'll have to speak up, Dean," Alastair smirked, and nicked the knife in just deep enough to cut bone.

"No more!" Dean's voice, ragged from screams, broke like his heart. "Sign me up. Please…" Alastair tore him free of the barbs, and a razor was pressed into his bloody palm.

"You've got to start small," he grinned, as Dean stared down at the razor. "You're gonna do me proud, boy."

Dean shuddered as his body healed itself - skin folding back to its rightful place, blood dripping off until he was clean again, sight restored in both eyes. He flexed his arms as bones repaired, fracturing back to where they belonged. Even the healing _hurt_, but it was made somewhat better by the sight of Alastair providing his first victim - a girl - struggling and screaming. Dean looked at her dispassionately, took her face in his hand, and started small.

The sound of Alastair's delighted laughter filled his ears, and Dean did not hear the almighty crack as Lucifer's first seal shattered.


	2. As You Fade Away

#2 - As You Fade Away

The girl's eyes filled with tears as, finally, she acknowledged that no-one was going to rescue her. Why was she special? She did not know. Nor did she know why the black-eyed people were so intent on hurting her. She wasn't anything special. Just an orphan, a waitress, not even graduated from school, no, oh no, don't do that, no, not again, _no_.

She blacked out, and the two demons paused in their meticulous work. One of them, a woman - tall and red-haired - chattered out a laugh like a squirrel as she bent over the girl's slight body. She glanced at the man with her - shorter, and suit-clad - before ducking her head to better see what she was doing.

A knife came up in her right hand as if from nowhere, and she lowered it slowly, precisely, to the tanned skin beneath. She breathed in, once, and the male glared down at her.

"Get on with it, Marisa! We don't have all night," Frank looked around, nervously, and Marisa laughed.

"You can't rush these things. Shut up, you'll wake her again and then she'll never stop screaming." She stuck her tongue out slightly and began to sketch a design into the stomach of the girl. Raised lines of blood followed her knife, but it wasn't until the sigil was almost complete that the girl awoke, and screamed.

Marisa clucked her tongue, and gestured for Frank to hold her down. "I've only got one more bit left to do, never fear duckling." She finished the sigil, which shone brightest cerulean for a second before disappearing completely. "There," Marisa said, satisfied. "All done." She sat back on her heels and scrutinised her handiwork. "Not bad, eh Frank?"

"We'll see, won't we?"

"Nine months time," she nodded in return. "Oh no duck, you mustn't fret. It won't hurt a bit," she patted the girl on the hand, absently, and then chuckled. "Well, it won't hurt the child. You, well… that's a different story."

The girl's eyes widened, but Frank's hand was heavy over her mouth, and she could not scream. Her muffled noises made him smile - not a very pleasant smile - and he looked down at her, coal-black eyes seeming to absorb all light.

"If you try to get rid of it, we'll know," he said, with relish. "It won't like having to come early."

"It'll be hungrier, that's for sure," Marisa agreed. "There probably wouldn't be anything left of you, after that."

The girl fainted, and the two demons laughed heartily.

They were gone before she awoke, no evidence that they were ever there. She pulled up her lavender jumper slowly, and examined her belly. Nothing.

She had no bruises, no sign of anything, but, when the stirrings of dread began to rise in the pit of her stomach, three months later, she began to believe, for the first time, that perhaps she hadn't imagined it.

The girl went about her life steadily, holding all inside. She quietly acquired medication for hysteria, and the world became numb as her belly swelled.

At eight months, she broke down, and told her adopted mother. The pity on her face was more than the girl could bear. She never mentioned it again. Simply folded in on herself, as her last month unwound.

She left all her affairs completed; no task was left unfinished. At exactly nine months, on the second night of the full moon, the girl said goodnight to her adopted parents, went up to her bedroom, and sat down.

The next morning, she was gone. A smashed window and horrific amounts of blood were the only things she left behind.


	3. Stripped

#3 - Stripped…

down to the bone, and bone tired, the runner could not look up. Blood dripped from its hands; from eyes and from mouth. The runner knew it was too late. It could not be saved - it could never be saved. How can something with no memory, no _self_, be rescued? It did not know. Its mind was only in the present, in the torment. All knowledge had been stripped away from its mind with the slow, steady application of demon knives.

It ran from that demon, clutching onto the desperate, flaring pain in every fibre of its being. Feeling was better than not-feeling; better than blankness and numbness and emptiness and transparency.

It stumbled and fell, a flap of skin tangled about its elongated foot. Dirt crumbled into raw flesh, and the runner howled with the pain. It staggered to failing feet once more, then gasped as a dark figure materialised out of the fog.

"Boo," the figure said, then guffawed as the runner set off again, barely keeping itself upright. "You're so close," the demon murmured, its voice oddly flat in the damp air. "Almost the-ee-re." It followed the runner at a leisurely pace, its grin getting wider at every moan and drop of blood that tumbled from its lips. Or what remained of them.

The runner's gait was uncertain, now. Some buried instinct told it to turn around, go no further, stop oh stop, but it could not hear over the wheezing of its breath and the roaring of the demon's laughter and the hammering of the pain.

It swerved, lost balance, fell, and looked up as the demon approached; helpless as the countless human prey it had feasted on itself.

"Ngh-" it said. "Nhow pulaze."

"I don't understand Wendigo," the demon commented. "Do you know where we are?"

The runner - the Wendigo - turned its head and what was left of its eyes widened. "Curuzzruhh-"

"Bingo!" the demon said. "Oh yes indeed, very well done! A crossroads." Its voice was jolly and its smile wider than sin, but the Wendigo felt something behind it that was not jolly and smiley, and it tried piteously to wriggle away.

"Now now, what's this? You can't get away, surely you know that." The demon raised a carefully trimmed eyebrow and pursed thin lips. "You are going to die, that is foretold. But you can take the knowledge that you're helping a good cause with you! That's something, right?"

The Wendigo whimpered, and scrabbled at the loose dirt. It was clawless now - the demon had pulled each and every one, and set them aside carefully - but its bleeding fingertips still made vague impressions in the ground.

"Doing that only helps my cause. Less work for me!" the demon said, cheerfully. "Wouldn't want to get my meat dirty," he did a twirl, the fussy grey coat he was wearing streaming out behind like smoke. "It's such a handsome body, don't you think? Although I don't suppose you can see properly, can you, after I peeled away part of your eyes. Hm," he said. "I should probably get that shovel out now." He swung an ugly backpack off his back and pulled out a shovel blade and three lengths of wood, which he snapped together and then attached to the blade.

Swinging the shovel over his shoulder, he smiled down at the Wendigo with coal eyes. "No hard feelings, eh?"


End file.
